Gays should have the same rights as the rest of us

I have two grown sons. They hardly, if ever, try to influence their father’s political opinions. But they don’t have to. Not only because on most issues we happen to think pretty much alike anyway, but because the simple fact that I have two children already shapes my politics more than anything else on earth. What I want for them more than anything else is a good, long, happy, healthy life.

So when it comes to issues as diverse as war and peace, and access to health care, and guns, energy, education, Social Security, and everything else, my thoughts and ambitions, first and foremost, are for my children. Then, after that, for everyone else’s.

And I’m not alone. It seems that some powerful politicians, although subject to strong influence by everyone from lobbyists to donors to their political parties to (lest we forget) their constituencies, are even more strongly influenced by one factor nothing else can trump: their children.

Which might help explain why the nation is shifting faster than it usually does on a controversy of moral, political, and social significance: gay marriage. The most recent political leader to do a 180 on this is Ohio Sen. Rob Portman. He has long opposed major gay rights proposals but thoughtfully concluded, and announced in mid-March, that gay people aren’t such bad people after all and deserve the same rights as everyone else. His impetus? One of his own grown sons, who revealed to his father two years ago that he is gay.

It was a reminder of another major politician, also otherwise aligned with the political right, who decided and publicly announced — back in fact when he was only a heartbeat from the presidency, and his Republican Party was more stridently opposed to any kind of gay rights agenda than it seems to be today — that his own lesbian daughter’s loves and lifestyle aren’t something to condemn but rather something to support: former Vice President Dick Cheney. Around the time the Supreme Court was hearing the arguments for and against gay marriage, we learned that even Chief Justice John Roberts has a first cousin who’s gay.

To be bluntly honest, I myself don’t understand how one man can be romantically attracted to another, nor one woman to another. It’s just not how I’m wired. But what I do understand, partly because two of my cousins as well as several friends’ children are great people and oh, by the way, gay, is that whether or not I understand doesn’t matter. What does matter is that this is how they feel and this is how they’re wired — just like Portman’s son, just like Cheney’s daughter.

If I do what I can to protect and support my own children when it comes to everything from health care to war, then I ought to do what I can for everyone else’s, too. And so should the politicians who still stand in the way of equality for Americans who are gay. These politicians, and their supporters, will tell you that their moral code is what matters, or their religion, or perhaps the old standby that gay marriage destroys the sanctity of marriage between a man and a woman.

Well, I’ll tell you what: I have a moral code, too, and if it is founded on a single principle, it is that all men are created equal. I didn’t write that, our Founding Fathers did, and today, if not in 1776, it means that all men ought to have equal opportunity. Anyway, if gay Americans eventually win the legal right to wed in every state in the union, it won’t put a dent in the sanctity of my marriage, which is at almost 40 years and counting. In fact the only change it will bring about is that gay relatives and friends … and yes, the gay children of politicians, too … will have the same rights as the rest of us.

Greg Dobbs of Evergreen was a correspondent for ABC News for 23 years, then for HDNet television’s “World Report.”

Vincent Carroll is The Denver Post's editorial page editor. He has been writing commentary on politics and public policy in Colorado since 1982 and was originally with the Rocky Mountain News, where he was also editor of the editorial pages until that newspaper gave up the ghost in 2009.

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